


ms 





LIFE 
AND WHAT TO LIVE FOR 


By 
SHERWOOD EDDY 


Association Press 
New Yorke: 124 Easr 28TH Srreet 
1916 


COPYRIGHT, I916, BY 
THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF 
YounG MEN’s CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS 


Price: 10 cents each; 80 cents per dozen; 
$5.00 per hundred, plus carriage 





Life: And What to Live For 


Something is wrong in the world, and somehow I am 
wrong myself. There seems to be an inward cleavage, 
a central contradiction; a rift in the very center of my 
personality. I am not what I ought to be, what I was 
meant to be, or all that I might be. I am alive, but 
what am I living for? I have an ambition, but am I 
realizing it; a conscience, but am I living up to it; I seek 
happiness, but am I finding it? If there is something 
wrong, what is it? Is it life that is wrong, or I myself? 

“What is the meaning of life?’ asks Tolstoi; and every 
thinking mind or doubting heart has asked the question, 
in one form or another, since the world began. Ever 
since the ancient Greeks sought the summum bonum, 
and long before, men have tried to understand the problem 
of existence. Kant asks the question of philosophy, 
“What can I know? What ought I to do? What may 
I hope for?” Ruskin faces life with the same challenge 
from the point of view of practical living, “Whence came 
I? Why am I here? Whither am I going?” Sir Oliver 
Lodge in his “Reason and Belief’? asks essentially the 
same question from the standpoint of science, “Why do 
we exist? What are we here for? What does existence 
mean?” 


3 


Life is a problem, a paradox; worse still it is a con- 
tradiction. The very magnitude of human suffering 
would indicate that if life means anything it must mean 
something very intensely. The measure of our desires, 
our ambitions, and the capacities within us, and of. the 
far flung universe without us, suggest both magnitude and 
meaning. But what is life itself? Biology, while it 
cannot define, describes life as harmony with environ- 
ment: “the continuous adjustment of internal relations 
to external relations”; it is to be in vital connection with 
surroundings, in relation to the sources of life. But it 
requires at least two terms for its definition, the organism 
and the environment. In other words life is a relation- 
ship. There is no such thing as life in isolation, for 
absolute isolation is death. 

To be in correspondence with our material environ- 
ment means physical life. But even this leaves us un- 
satisfied, with all our higher powers craving a similar 
correspondence with a higher environment. What are 
the relationships of my super-sensible or higher life? Cor- 
responding to the three positive physical functions of as- 
similation, growth, and reproduction, there seem to be 
three similar relationships of the spiritual life. I shall 
find that to live truly I am confronted by the necessity 
of assimilation from my spiritual environment, of growth 
that I may become all I am capable of becoming in char- 
acter, and of the reproduction of life by self-sacrificing 
service for my fellow men. That is, I shall find I stand 
in some relation to the source and ground of existence 
that is religious, I have a relation or duty to myself that 
is moral, and to my fellow men that is social. 


4 


Let us, however, change the order and start with the 
second, as the simplest. I find that this doubting, ques- 
tioning, unsatisfied life within stands in a relation to 
myself, that is to my ideal, or possible or higher self. 
My whole being cries out for growth, for freedom, for 
self-realization. Conscience within and the moral order 
without summon me to noble living, to a life of purity, 
victory, and power. 

But life must mean not only growth, but reproductive 
service. A world of fellow men about me, often in physi- 
cal need, in mental ignorance, in conditions of social 
injustice, or in spiritual want, summon me to such a life 
of service. But this does not end my obligation. Even 
apart from my fellow men my life is not independent, 
isolated, and self-sufficient. I am a creature made debtor 
anew in every breath that.I breathe and in the power 
that comes from every pulse-beat. [ am not my own. I 
do not own my life but I owe it. My whole life, physical, 
mental, moral, and spiritual is dependent upon the source 
of life, upon the ground of existence, upon God. We 
have not time or space here to labor to prove the 
existence or nature of God.* For most of us the ques- 
tion of the existence of God is not our real difficulty, 
rather it lies within us. Our chief problem is not in God 
but in ourselves. It is within ourselves that we find the 





*An answer to those who have serious questions regarding 
religious fundamentals is given in the pamphlet “Doubt: or 
Practical Suggestions for those having Intellectual Difficulties 
regarding the Christian Faith,” published by Association Press, 
124 East 28th Street, New York City. 


5 


central contradiction of life. It is here that something 
seems to be wrong and here that we wish to be right. 


THE Man Who Is WronGc 


Instead of fulfilling my duty to myself, instead of 
growth in character for the realization of my ideal, 
somehow I am wrong here in the very center of my 
being. My mind approves the ideal, my heart craves it, 
my will strives to achieve it, yet is it realized? Instead 
of purity, victory, and power I find impurity, defeat, and 
weakness. Instead of a natural and normal growth, I 
find rebellion and discord in the very center of the citadel 
of personality. If I have not yet found myself and if I 
am an honest man, I will cry out with that moral wrestler 
of old, and with the great souls that have faced the moral 
conflict since the world began, “O wretched man that I 
am!’ “The good that I would I do not; but the evil 
which I would not, that I do.” 

And when likewise I face the obligation to my fellow 
men and the call to build a new social order, 1 am com- 
pelled to say, “O selfish man that I am!” And when I 
turn to God, from a goading conscience which says “I 
ought” or, in more modern English, “I owe,” here before 
the final tribunal, and in the last court of appeal, I stand 
finally condemned and pronounce my own sentence, in 
the words, “O sinful man that I am.” 

But what is sin? I find within myself a rift, a cleavage, 
a divided self. Instead of glad obedience to my own 
conscience, I find the uprising of low desires. Instead 

6 


of glad service for a world of needy men, I find a self- 
centered life in conflict with the social good. Instead of 
life in God as the spiritual environment of the soul, a life 
as natural as breathing, glad as the sunshine and free 
as the air, I find this inner cleavage which makes me 
uncomfortable at the very thought of God. And this is 
sin. It is selfishness. It is the assertion of my lower self- 
life against my own conscience, the welfare of my fellow 
men, and the law of God. It is a voluntary break with 
my rightful and natural environment. It is a starving or 
stifling of the higher possibilities of life. It is disease, 
which is only the thriving of a lower parasitic form of 
life at the expense of the higher or normal life. 

Sin, then, is a break with the higher environment. It 
implies a false center in the organism and a corre- 
spondence with a false environment. And what a break 
it is—what misery it entails! Morally it breaks the 
law of my own being; socially it breaks the law of human 
happiness; religiously it breaks the law of God; and 
finally it breaks the law of life and ends in a moral wreck, 
in death itself. It is wrong, wrong every way, abso- 
lutely and infinitely wrong. It fills our prisons, hospitals, 
asylums. It wrecks men, ruins homes, divides society, 
undermines nations, blots out human happiness, kills life. 
It? Nay, rather “Thou art the man!’ It is no imper- 
sonal abstraction, but the rebellion of a free will against 
the sovereign will of God, against all that is right. It is 
just being wrong, wrong in yourself and wrong all 
round. 

Professor James thus defines two contrasted moral 
states or conditions. On the one hand there is “a self 


4 


hitherto divided, and consciously wrong, inferior, and 
unhappy.” And on the other hand there is a life “united 
and consciously right, superior, and happy.” 

We might draw up in two parallel columns the con- 
trast between the two states. One is divided, the other is 
unified; one is a life of discord, the other of harmony. 
One is fundamentally and inevitably inconsistent, the 
other is consistent. The divided life is wrong with itself, 
wrong with its fellow men, wrong with God. The divided 
life is of necessity the unhappy life, for happiness, as 
Aristotle shows, depends on the harmonious exercise of 
function, the unified realization of all the higher ends of 
being. And the ultimate negation of life, and its final 
alternative, is death, or the want of correspondence 
between the spiritual organism and its spiritual environ- 
ment. 

Here then are two contrasted conditions: life or death, 
harmony or discord, unity or division, right or wrong, 
light or darkness, happiness or unhappiness. It may be 
maintained that to err is human, that we cannot be 
perfect or realize our ideal, that life always is and there- 
fore must be divided. 


Tue IDEAL REALIZED 


But one did realize the ideal, did live life at the full. 
One lived the unified life and claimed that He lived it. 
Harnack has pointed out that all other founders of 
religion have passed through some crisis or “conver- 
sion” or found deliverance from a once broken, divided, 
and discordant life—all save one, Jesus of Nazareth. 

8 


As we recall His life, is anything more marked or 
manifest than its consistent unity? There is no regret, 
no compromise, no shifting, no repentance. His life 
moves to some hidden harmony. He is right with Him- 
self. There is no break between profession and practice, 
life and teaching, religion and morality. He is what He 
teaches. He teaches what He is, and calmly says, “I 
am the Truth.” He is right with mankind. With an 
enthusiasm for humanity, a sense of the infinite worth of 
the individual, and with infinite love for all men as His 
brothers, He proclaims a new social program, creates a 
new social consciousness, furnishes a new social motive, 
provides a new social dynamic, and conceives a new 
social order—the Kingdom of God. 

And He is right not only with Himself and with men, 
but with God. He lives in the sunshine of His presence, 
conscious of perfect harmony and oneness with Him. 
God, for Him, is the one great reality, and He makes 
Him real for all men. Always emphasizing His oneness 
with us and sharing His fellowship with us, He seems to 
have enough of God for Himself and all humanity, for 
time and all eternity. Finding life at its center and 
source, He goes out to call all men to be His brothers and 
children of the loving Father in Heaven. He has brought 
to men the realization of God as Father and made Him 
the common possession of all mankind. Certainly no 
other ever had such unity in himself, such a passion for 
service for humanity, such a fulness of God in human 
life. And certainly no other has so helped individuals 
and society toward the realization of this threefold, 
unified life. 


9 


If you have not yourself realized your ideal, if you are 
wrong instead of right, could you not take Him as your 
ideal? The whole significance of His life was that it was 
lived for others, that they might have life, have it abun- 
dantly, with every faculty raised to its highest power 
and every relationship realized. To whom else shall we 
go? How strong He was: strong in temptation—fiercely 
tempted forty days, He returns with power enough 
to save a defeated humanity; strong in His power over 
nature, which seemed to spring up in miracle in answer 
to His touch; strong in His hold upon men, who forsook 
all to follow Him and after sixty generations still gladly 
go to the ends of the earth or to martyrdom for Him; 
strong in His hold upon God, the center and source and 
substance of Life. 

How pure and holy, how right He was. He is a kind 
of “personalized conscience” to us, a realized ideal, a 
revelation of all we might be. He calls a whole world 
to repentance but needs none Himself. If I am wrong, 
He at least was right. 

And how loving He was. Through days of healing, 
and nights of prayer, with compassion for multitudes, yet 
lavishing His care upon obscure individuals, loving the 
poor, touching the leper, healing the sick, laying His 
hands on the heads of little children; here is love vast as 
the ocean, forced through the channels of a single heart, 
the very love of God in a single human life. For what- 
ever be our doubts about Jesus, we can ask no more of 
God than that He should be like Christ. If God is like 
Christ then indeed “God’s in His Heayen—all’s right 
with the world.” His cross was the last limit of boundless 

10 


love, laying down its life for the utmost limit of sin, 
and pledging Himself and all the goodness of God to us, 
to the uttermost and forever. 

Well, if you are honest, and you are, you will admit 
that somehow you are wrong and He is right—strong, 
pure, and loving, right with Himself, right with the 
world, right with the loving God. He was the ideal 
realized, and realized for us. 

The first step in the realization of an ideal is to accept 
it. Will you then just as you are, and wrong as you are, 
begin to follow Him just as He is, and whatever your 
doubts or difficulties about Him may be? Thus simply 
began the first few disciples to follow Him when they 
knew less of Him than you do, as He called them with 
glad assurance, “Follow me; learn of me.” 


THe Man Woo Is RicHT 


To begin to get right you must aim right, you must 
choose right, you must follow right. Now to be frank, 
to begin to follow Christ would be to begin to be a 
Christian. You may not like the word, but what is a 
Christian but a follower of Christ, or one who is trying 
to live His life? And could we take this as a provisional, 
working definition that “a Christian is one who is re- 
sponding to all the meanings which he finds in Christ?” 

The first disciples, or learners, had not learned much 
about theology or philosophy or even about Himself. 
They had everything to learn, but they were willing to 
begin; they had a long journey to go, but they were 
following. They had a great moral stature to which to 

II 


grow, but they were growing; a world to win, but they 
were serving; a God to know, but they were learning. 
It was a very small and a very imperfect organism and 
a very great Environment, but they had begun to respond 
and they were living. To revert to the original order 
of our threefold relationship, a Christian would seem to 
be one who is responding to Christ in these three funda- 
mental relations of life, or one who is right with God, 
with himself, with his fellow men. He is one who, 
through Christ, seeks to live a right life, for God as his 
Father and for men as his brothers. 

First of all, to be a Christian is to be Right with God. 
The man is no longer cut off from his environment, 
starved, stunted, or dead. As naturally as the flower 
seeks the sun, by assimilation he lives and grows and 
has his being in God. He has entered upon the filial life, 
and the daily wonder of his Father’s love, new every 
morning, fresh every moment, surprises him at every 
turn. God opens to His child His very heart in the 
words, “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that is mine 
is thine.” 

The sense of being wrong, the sense of guilt for the 
past is now gone forever: for the man feels himself no 
longer a condemned slave but an accepted son. All sense 
of loneliness is gone, for he has ever with him the Great 
Companion, who has called us “friends.” All fear is 
banished from the true Christian life, for fear is expec- 
tation of evil and all evil is excluded from the will of 
God, for, “If God be for us who can be against us?” 
All sense of incompleteness, of being lost and forgotten 
and insignificant is gone, for “We are complete in Him,” 

12 


and the child finds his Father the supplement and com- 
plement of his own imperfect but growing life. The 
great adventure of life is now alluring, glad, and free; 
fraught with infinite possibilites, and assured by all the 
promises of God. At last, in the breadth and length and 
depth and full sweep of life, he lives. 

Secondly, to be a Christian is also to be Right with one’s 
self. Not that by any means he has yet attained his end 
or approached perfection, but he has accepted the ideal 
in the purpose and plan of God manifested for him in 
Christ. He has not attained to merit, but obtained a gift. 
He has not achieved a completed character, but entered a 
relationship. He has not satisfied a judge, but he has 
found a Friend. He has not reached an end, but he has 
made a beginning. His aim at least is right. To be 
righteous is to be right. The man is counted right 
because he is right, right in attitude, right in faith, And 
faith will in time make it a fact in experience. As the 
acorn is the promise of the oak, and the seed of the tree, 
faith is the germ of the full grown fact, the promise of 
the perfected character. 

Under Christ’s touch Simon, the ‘“‘fickle one’ becomes 
Peter a very “rock” of strength, and the obscure and 
insignificant fisherman a world-saint. John a “son of 
thunder” becomes the apostle of love. The hardened 
“Saul” becomes “Paul” writing with many tears, and the 
caste-ridden Jew becomes the apostle to the Gentiles. At 
His touch the foul leper becomes clean, the\ miserly 
Zaccheus becomes the first Christian philanthropist, and 
the very thief on the cross the first to enter with Him the 
life beyond. His touch has still its ancient power. And 


13 


we, in turn, like the great multitude who have gone on 
before us, become today His moral miracles. 

And, thirdly, to be a Christian means to be Right with 
men. Weare saved to serve. The Christian life cannot 
be lived in isolation. Here, too, we follow the example 
of Christ, for to be a Christian is, as the word implies, 
to be a Christ-one. It is the reversal of the old selfish 
life, for it shifts life to a new center. It is as revo- 
lutionary to character as the passage from the old earth- 
centered Ptolemaic plan of the heavens to the sun- 
centered Copernican system. 

“The hero is the man who is immovably centered,” 
says Emerson, and the Christ-centered man finds all 
things new. He now lives, not to get but to give, not for 
selfishness but for sacrifice. 

He, too, catches the spirit of Christ and joins the 
gathering host in the great succession of service. Here, 
too, the touch of Christ has still its ancient power to 
make men serve. An Augustine at His touch turns from 
the life of the libertine to that of the bishop, scholar, and 
writer. Francis of Assisi leaves his revels to go out in 
poverty, in joy, in song, till all Italy awakens at his call. 
Loyola yields his sword in the night’s vigil, and with it 
his life of lust, to muster the fighting “company of Jesus” 
and awaken southern Europe. Luther, the peasant-miner’s 
son, calls northern Europe to reform, at His summons. 
Count Zinzendorf, the worldling, becomes the missionary 
enthusiast. George Whitefield, the bartender, becomes 
at His touch the revivalist of Britain and America. John 
Bunyan, the drunken tinker, writes Pilgrim’s Progress; 
Jeremy Taylor, the barber, becomes the great bishop 


14 


and theologian; Wilberforce leaves his own bondage to 
free the slave; John Howard rescues the prisoner ; George 
Williams, the crude country boy, founds a new lay order. 
George Muller turns from his lusts to rescue the orphan. 
Lincoln, the rail splitter, rises as the liberator of the 
American slaves. Jerry McAuley, the river thief, goes 
out to save a thousand criminals and Samuel Hadley, the 
drunkard, to become the winner of men. 

These and all men who have caught His spirit or felt 
the throb of His love were quickened to a new life of 
service. Who but Christ so served or inspired service, 
so lived and died and lives again and ever again in each 
new life that He dominates? Ah, this it is to be a 
Christian! It is just to be what we know we ought to be, 
what we were made to be—to be right—right with God, 
right with ourselves, right with the world, right all round, 
and happy all through. For the unthought and unsought 
and inevitable resultant of the full Christian life is a 
radiant joy and gladness, the sheer happiness of the 
man who lives, the harmonious exercise of function with 
every power in full play. 


DIAGNOSIS AND CLASSIFICATION 


Have you got it? Are you living in this relation? 
Let your own heart speak and judge for itself. Professor 
James in his “Varieties of Religious Experience” defines 
conversion as the process by which “a self hitherto 
divided, and consciously wrong, inferior, and unhappy, 
becomes united and consciously right, superior, and happy, 
in consequence of its firm hold on religious realities.” 


15 


By this test is your life united or divided? Is it con- 
sciously right, superior, and happy? Or is it consciously 
wrong in its relationships, inferior even to its own im- 
perfect standards, and unhappy as a result? A little 
fearless and honest diagnosis will help us at this point. 
If we are right we can know it “consciously” and have a 
resultant happiness, and if we are wrong there must be 
some reason for it. 

Test your life by the tuning fork of conscience and see 
if it rings true and is in harmony, or if it is discordant and 
out of tune. Test it in the light of the three relationships 
which characterize the normal life. Are you right with 
God? Have you recognized Him as your Father and 
taken the filial attitude of a little child? Have you the 
glad sense of sonship? If not, ask yourself frankly 
why not? 

A man is conscious of his physical or mental life; surely 
the man who has it may be equally conscious of his 
spiritual life. A man has no doubt about his calling, 
whether he is a carpenter or a mason, a lawyer or a 
doctor, a follower of this trade or that; surely he may 
know if he is a follower of Christ. He has no doubts 
about his citizenship, whether of Tarsus or Jerusalem, 
whether he is English or American, Jew or Gentile. 
Surely he may know also if his “citizenship is in heaven.” 
He knows and is not ashamed of his family or of his 
father. He bears his name and lives in his fellowship. 
Surely, he may know and rejoice in his heavenly Father. 
To His child He is not some dim, distant, impersonal 
First Cause, or Inscrutable Energy, or World Ground, 
but the central certainty and joyous reality of his daily 

16 


life. Is He this to you? Have you become or are you 
willing to become His child? 

Again, are you right with yourself? Have you accepted 
the ideal and God’s way of realizing it? Is your life 
like a comet rushing madly through space, colliding with 
all that comes in its way; or like the planet that has 
caught the music of the spheres in its ordered orbit 
round the sun? 

Or apply the third test, are you right with a world of 
needy men? Have you a genuine love for men that leads 
you to effective service for them? Have you a message 
for men with a moral dynamic that can save men from 
themselves and their lower lusts, that can lift those who 
have lost themselves, or remend and make anew men 
who are like “broken earthenware,” the moral wrecks of 
life of which Harold Begbie tells us? If not, there is a 
great, verifiable human experience to which you are still 
a stranger and which you may know and prove if you 
will. 


How To Get RIGHT 


Most men want to be right in the relations of life, but 
some go about it in the wrong way. There are three 
common errors, three mistaken methods to be avoided 
here. First of all, no man can get right within, merely 
by outward forms and ceremonies. For the essence of 
religion is an inward relationship, not an outward cere- 
monial. We must “cleanse first the inside of the cup... . 
that the outside thereof may become clean also.” We 
must transform personality at its center and source, we 
must affect character. No outward act is a substitute 


17 


for this inward transformation. “My son, give me thy 
heart’? must ever be the reality of religion. The Pharisee 
thought he was saved by his outward institutions and 
privileges; by circumcision, the passover, the scrupulous 
tithing of petty trifles; he overlooked the great essentials 
of the love of God and man. But “neither is circum- 
cision anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creation” 
—life from within is the essential. Every formal religion 
has relied upon its sacraments, but if the heart is wrong, 
no sacrament, Christian or non-Christian, can be a sub- 
stitute for character. Judas had been baptized and had 
partaken of the Christian privileges; Ananias and Sap- 
phira had had their part in the Christian sacraments. 
Simon Magus had been baptized but he had neither part 
nor lot in the reality of religion; for his “heart is not 
right before God.’ Here are the two eternal poles of 
religion, “thy heart,” and “before God.” 

Again, a man is not made right by selfish or legal good 
works. These have always been the first impulse of the 
natural man in every age and in every religion. If there 
is something wrong he naturally tries to right himself. 
But the inevitable failure of this method is evident in the 
very nature of the case. For religion, as we have seen, 
is not an attainment but an attitude, not a series of 
Pharisaic meritorious works, but the loving personal rela- 
tionship of a son to a Father, not the making of a record 
but the making of a man. Though it implies morality, 
it is much more than morality. The self-righteous 
Pharisee was ahead of the Publican who prayed “God 
be merciful to me a sinner,” in attainment, but not in 
attitude. His very selfish attainment rendered vital reli- 

18 


gion almost impossible. His self-satisfied pride in his 
cheap outward record of respectability had turned its 
back on God as the loving Father, and kept him from 
entering the spiritual Kingdom as a little child. Many a 
modern man, who never dreams himself to be a Pharisee, 
sets up some subjective or arbitrary standard of his own 
of outward morality and because he is better than some 
others around him, or prides himself on his generous 
impulses, or has done “about as near right as he can,” 
thinks he has all the religion he needs. He draws his 
circle of heaven just large enough to include himself. 
But he forgets that religion is not only doing right, but 
being right, with God, with himself, with his fellow men. 

A third error is avoided if we remember that religion 
does not consist in knowledge, nor in dead and formal 
faith without works, nor in mere orthodoxy of belief, 
We may know all about the theory of religion and never 
practice it. We may have been brought up in a Christian 
home or church and have a lot of second-hand religion 
that we have received from our parents or teachers or 
friends, to whom it was a vital fact, and yet we may never 
have appropriated it for ourselves. We may know all 
about the Bible and about Christ, without ever having 
yielded our lives to Him. But how often He has Himself 
warned us that this is not religion, “Not everyone that 
saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the Kingdom 
of Heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father who 
is in Heaven.” It is not the great in intellect but the 
pure in heart who see God. It is not outward familiarity 
but inward response that determines religious reality. 

What then is the relation between faith and works? We 


19 


are rightly related to God by faith alone, but true faith is 
never alone, it always manifests itself in works. Faith is 
the root, works are the fruit; faith is the cause, works 
are the result. We work because we are right, not in 
order to get right. Briefly, then, a man is not made right 
by outward forms and ceremonies, by self-sufficient good 
works, nor by knowledge. He becomes right by entering 
into a right relation with God as his Father through the 
simple trust of a little child. 

Let us turn then from the wrong way to the right way 
of getting right. To realize what is needed, let us see 
where the man is wrong. Any personal relation may be 
viewed from the standpoint of either party. If religion 
is the establishment of a right relation with God, we 
may view it from the point of view of what God does 
or of what we have to do; that is, objectively or sub- 
jectively. On God’s side it is the giving of a gift, on our 
part the receiving of it; on the divine side there is the 
giving of life or “regeneration” and on the human the 
turning to receive the gift in “conversion.” 

Jesus, however, did not speak of this experience as of 
a deep theological mystery, but as the simplest and most 
natural thing in the world. In the first gospel He speaks 
of it as simply entering a door or gate, accepting an 
invitation to a glad wedding feast, turning to God with 
the teachable spirit of a little child. In the second gospel 
He says it is just believing a piece of good news, following 
a person in fellowship and service, with the resultant 
healing of a divided, broken personality so that life is 
made “whole” with all its powers restored. In the third 
gospel the experience on God’s side is likened to the 

20 


finding of a lost sheep or a lost coin and on the man’s 
side the return of a lost son to his father. In the fourth 
gospel it is the receiving of a person as an indwelling 
guest in the heart, or, to an ignorant woman, it is likened 
to taking a drink to quench the thirst of life.* Only 
once to a theologian does He speak of the mystery of a 
new birth, and after all what more is that, on the human 
side, than just entering life, or beginning to live as a little 
child? Becoming a Christian is just beginning to be one, 
just becoming a learner of Christ’s teaching and a fol- 
lower of His life. 

Perhaps the clearest teaching of all is that of the simple 
story of the son who lost his father in Luke XV. Observe 
throughout that it is a relation of a father and son, 
personal, vital, voluntary; not legal, judicial, govern- 
mental. There were three things wrong with this young 
man. He was wrong with his father, with himself, with 
his family. He gets as far away as he can from his father. 
He turns his back upon his father and his face to his own 
selfish life of sin. There are no letters, no love, no fellow- 
ship, no correspondence on the son’s side. He is “lost” 
to his father, away from the one to whom he belongs. 
Being wrong with his father he cannot be right with 
himself. Before he “came to himself” he was living as it 
were beside himself or rather beneath himself, out of his 
true self, out of center. Rags, swine, and harlots were 
only the outward symptoms of the wrong that started 
when he turned his back on his father ; for he was equally 





*See Matthew 7:13, 18:2, 22:2. Mark 1:15, 17. Luke 15. 
John 1:12, 3:16, 4:10, 14, 5:24, 10:9, 10. 


2I 


wrong whether in rags or in respectability, with swine 
or with selfish Pharisees. 

Wrong with his father, and wrong in himself, he could 
not be right with men. Separation from his father sepa- 
rated him from his home, his brother, his duties, from 
right relations with all men. 

Observe now how simple and natural and right is his 
return. He says “I will arise and go to my father.” 
He does not stay away to earn merit or become more 
respectable. What the father wanted was not respecta- 
bility but his son. “He came to Himself”; he found him- 
self. As the meaning of the word conversion implies, 
he simply turned round. And, he came home to a new 
life of joy with all its rightful relationships and possi- 
bilities of service. All wrong before, he becomes right 
all round now. Essentially it was one act, but it affects 
all his relationships. It was one act but it has two aspects ; 
it was a turning from and a turning to, a break with the 
past or lower environment and a correspondence with the 
higher, which in theological language would be repentance 
and faith. 

In other language, conversion is a definite change of 
ethical standpoint, of the moral direction of a man’s life. 
“It is the birth of a new, dominant affection by which 
the God-consciousness, hitherto marginal and vague, be- 
comes focal and dynamic.” In another aspect, it is the 
response of the whole personality to the personality of 
Christ. This change of ethical standpoint is illustrated, 
as Dr. Fosdick points out, by the contrast of the two 
requests of the son “give me” and “make me.” His first 
thought is, give me the inheritance: life for him is the 

22 


selfish possession of things, of pleasures, of passions. 
But the higher conception is, “make me” what I ought to 
be: life is now a character in right relationship. Indeed 
religion, and life itself, is just the sum total of a man’s 
personal relationships. Even as Christ said, a man’s 
life consisteth not in the abundance of things; this is life, 
to know God. Which of these two characterizes your 
own life? Have you known this change or experience 
which has been repeated and verified by men in every one 
of the last nineteen centuries? 


WHEN To GET RIGHT 


Professor James in his classic essay “The Will to 
Believe,” shows that every proposal to act comes to us in 
the form of an hypothesis. It may be an issue that is 
either living or dead; it may be one that is either forced 
or avoidable; it may be either momentous or trivial. The 
question that we now have before us is that of the very 
meaning of life, involving also the questions of the 
existence and nature of God, the value of Christ, the 
question of duty, of social obligation and of human 
destiny. It is a living issue, it is unavoidable, and it is 
momentous. It affects character and destiny for time 
and eternity. It is for every man the supreme problem 
of existence, for upon it all the issues of life depend. 

There are two fundamental questions that may be asked 
concerning Christ. The first was asked by Jesus Him- 
self as the test question to His disciples, “Who say ye 
that I am?” The second was asked by Pilate at His 
trial. “What then shall I do with Jesus that is called 


23 


Christ?” The first is a question of opinion or belief, the 
second, one of action or decision. The latter is well 
illustrated in Pilate’s own case. The issue was unavoid- 
able. He had to do something with Jesus. He tries first 
every possible evasion. He thrice pronounces Jesus inno- 
cent, he sends Him to Herod to escape the necessity of 
deciding for himself, but Herod is equally cowardly and 
sends Him back. He offers to release Him instead of 
Barabbas. He then has Him scourged as a compromise. 
He washes his hands in protest. He finally appeals to the 
multitude with the words, “Behold the man.” But still 
he had to decide; he had to do something. He must 
crucify or release Him, accept or reject, confess or deny 
Him. Ultimately no middle ground was possible. Silence, 
procrastination, excuses, compromise, or cowardice did 
not solve the question. 

What motives beat upon him in this soul conflict! In 
judging Christ he was really judging himself. If he 
rejects Him he rejects God who sent him; if he rejects 
Him, he rejects his own conscience and higher nature; 
if he rejects Him he is rejecting the hope of his nation 
and of mankind. And everyone who rejected Him that 
night sealed his own doom. Pilate himself was finally 
recalled to Rome to appear before Caligula, and, as 
Eusebius tells us, wearied with misfortune committed 
suicide. Herod, the mocker of Christ and murderer of 
John the Baptist, was banished and died in disgrace. 
Judas His betrayer went out and hanged himself. The 
Jews who said, “His blood be on us,’’ were conquered, 
their temple and city destroyed, and scattered to the ends 
of the earth for twenty centuries. 


24 


But on the other hand those who accepted Christ found 
the joy of life, abundant and eternal; right with God, 
right with themselves, right with a world of men. The 
issue is now before you. It is living, it is unavoidable, it is 
momentous. What then will you do with Jesus who is 
called Christ? 

Will you not, just as you are, whatever may be your 
doubt, or difficulty, or sin, accept Christ and begin 
to follow Him? Do it today. For the present is the 
moment of duty, of opportunity and of action. Do it 
now. Like the son who came home to his father, just 
turn round and do right. Come home to your Father, 
come to yourself, come to a life of service. For this is 
the meaning of existence. This is Life—and what we 
should live for. 


25 





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